Gentoo Penguins - Pygoscelis papua

The most northerly of the Antarctic penguins, Gentoos are
one of the most laid back, while they do have their noisy moments,
particularly at nest building time, they are no where near as
aggressive and raucous as Adélies and chinstraps for instance.
By comparison a Gentoo colony is a calm and far more sedate
place.

Gentoo Penguin facts - Basics

Average Weight: 5.5kg - 12lbAverage Height: 71cm - 28 inches

Breeding Season: December - March

Estimated world population:
- 387,000 breeding pairs, status not clear, may be
decreasing or possibly increasing in the south
of the range, there can be quite large year-to-year fluctuations
in the population size. Colonies tend to be much smaller
than other similar penguins, the largest has around 6,000
breeding pairs.

Distribution:
Circumpolar, the most northerly of the 4 Antarctic species.
80% are found in three locations, the Falkland Islands,
South Georgia and the South Shetland Islands and the Antarctic
Peninsula. The last 25 years have seen significant changes
in population sizes in particular locations either growth
or decline, overall the population is becoming somewhat
more southerly.

What are Gentoo penguins like?

Gentoo penguins are the largest of the
Pygoscelis penguins, though not by much, they average
about 5.5kg and 71cm tall for the southern gentoo and about
6.2kg and 80cm tall for the slightly larger northern gentoo.
The northern subspecies nests on and around the sub-Antarctic
island of South Georgia, while the southern subspecies nests
as far south as the Antarctic peninsula to 65 degrees south.

The picture above on the right shows a parent gentoo feeding
its chick. The chick is very close to fledging judging by its
size. Penguin chicks appear so large because they are covered
in thick down before they gain their adult feathers so they
frequently look bigger than the adults that they are feeding
from, it's largely fluff though and once they shed the down
and grow the adult feathers they seem to shrink a few sizes.

This feeding is clearly taking place away from the main colony.
As the chicks get bigger they beg for food from almost any adult
that comes their way. It is in the adults interest to only feed
their own chicks, so there is often a chase right through and
away from the colony with much calling to each other while the
adult establishes that this really is their chick.

A feature seen in this photograph that surprises people is
how green some bits of Antarctica can appear away from the snow
and ice. This area is covered in snow and ice in the winter,
but in the warmer months, this melts exposing rocks and in places,
an extensive carpet of moss (not grass), large expanses
of green can also turn out on closer inspection to be lichens
growing on the bare rock.

More about nests and chicks

In the left hand picture, You can just
about make out under the parent that the egg has cracked and
there's an as yet upside down foot as the hatchling struggles
out of its shell.

Gentoo penguins are the last to arrive on their nesting sites
at the southern limits of their range. Unlike other species
that nest alongside them nearer to the Antarctic mainland, they
wait until the sea ice has retreated before heading for the
nesting grounds.

Right picture - These gentoo nests are spaced out in a
way that nearly all penguin nests are spaced out, at just over
two "attack lengths" apart.

If a penguin sitting on its nest can get a peck at a nearby
or passing penguin, then it will usually do so. The resulting
spacing is that penguins sitting on adjacent nests are just
that bit too far away to reach each other, so neither feels
immediately threatened and peace ensues. The same idea applies
in the English Parliament House of Commons where the government
and opposition benches are situated just over two sword lengths
apart, should the honourable gentlemen decide to circumvent
the electorate in the days when that sort of thing went on.

The down side of this arrangement is that when a penguin
wants to leave the nest to go fishing, or if it's coming back
from fishing, it becomes in range of both beaks from the adjacent
nests when walking through the colony. So for the time from
arrival at the colony in the spring to when the chicks have
grown up a bit and hang around off the nest in "crèches",
coming and going can be quite painful for these hardy birds.

Looking as cute as any baby bird can, penguin
chicks of this age are food processing machines. With a
relatively late start to the season compared to many other birds
and the need to leave early before it begins to get cold with
the threat of sea-ice arriving, Antarctic animals have to grow
fast to survive.

These pictures taken with only a moderate telephoto lens
shows how close you can get to the nest without disturbing the
penguins or chicks. These were taken on Signy Island in the
South Orkneys group where the only humans that the wildlife
encountered were occasional scientists who lived at the scientific
base elsewhere on the island. Increasing tourist pressure on
certain regions of Antarctica, particularly around the Antarctic
Peninsula mean that for many people who visit the Antarctic,
it is not possible to take such pictures. If the tourists that
visited were allowed to get this close to the wildlife on a
regular basis, the wildlife would soon up sticks (or stones)
and disappear.

Penguin painting?!There area a number of long term scientific projects
in the Antarctic one of them being an annual survey of penguin
numbers and breeding success at specific breeding areas. Theis
picture shows such a survey of a penguin colony on Signy Island
in the South Orkneys group.

As they look rather similar it's not easy to know which penguins
you've counted and which you haven't. So the answer is to use
very dilute paint and tie a brush to the end of a stick, giving
each counted penguin a splodge as you count them. The problem
on this day was that the rather wet snow that fell meant that
the paint mark that was supposed to wash off the next time the
penguin went swimming, lasted only a few minutes instead. It
didn't make it any easier that the penguins kept laying down
and hiding their paint marks as they tried to shield themselves
from the worst of the snow.

Learning to swim

This is one of my favourite events that
I was privileged to see when I was in Antarctica. Gentoo penguins
- one of my favourite Antarctic animals being cute, comic and
noble all at the same time.

These gentoos are youngsters
that have only just moulted their juvenile down and have grown
their first ever adult plumage, the penguin equivalent of
young teenagers.

It was a calm, mild day and nearly all of the adult birds
were off fishing in the favourable conditions leaving the youngsters
behind in their crèche. These young birds
had never been in the sea before and they decided pretty much altogether
that it was time to learn to swim and so they all waddled down
to the shore-line where there was a very gentle swell with
waves of just an inch or two high coming in - ideal conditions.

Unlike seals, penguins learn to swim without their parents
and these started off paddling in the shallows. Some of the
less adventurous ones mis-timing the waves and suddenly getting
about two inches of water over their feet would turn round and
run back up the beach flippers outstretched in considerable
horror. Eventually, they did all end up standing around in the
water like a collection of matronly old aunts "taking the
waters", they'd go in up their waists (or where the waist
would be if they had one) and look quite pleased with themselves
waving their flippers around a bit. Every now and then, one
of those pesky waves would come again and take them by surprise,
so it was jump up, flippers out and all rush out of the sea
again. All in all it was about half an hour before they were
all standing in the water and appeared to be anything like comfortable
with being there.

A few of them laid down in water about 2 or 3 inches deep
and put their beak in the water, a bit like children daring
themselves to put their face in the water, then over the next
half an hour or so, they moved back out of the sea and went
back to wait for mum and dad to come with an after-dip snack.